Ron Campbell's Blog

Monday, December 11, 2017

I'm currently
playing 20 characters in a 5 actor adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the
World in 80 Days. One actor plays the unflappable Phileas Fogg and the rest
of the cast plays key parts like his erstwhile servant Passepartout, the dogged
Detective Fix and Aooda, the girl he rescues plus a few assorted British
noblemen and Indian elephant sellers.

I play
everybody else.

20 characters.

20 different
accents.

20 different
costumes.

20 separate
and distinct body types.

20 velcro
enabled, dresser assisted whirlwinds in the wings to change everything from
boots to facial hair and everything in between.

All packed
into 1 sweaty, frantic and strangely invigorating evening of performing.

9 shows a
week.

For 4 weeks.

That's 720
characters in 1 month.

But who's
counting.

And each
character is clamoring for his (or her) own respect, truthfulness and
integrity. Each character possesses his (or her) own gait, gestures and
grievances. Each character is trying to get his (or her) laughs.

I've done this
kind of thing before. Most recently I played 20 characters in a one man
adaptation of The Dybbuk at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Previously I've
played 28 characters in a one man adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, 22
characters in The Boneman of Benares and 38 characters in The
Thousandth Night. In those one man shows the costume changes were usually
done in full view of the audience. A scarf or a hat suggested the new
character. A pillow became a hunchback or boobs or a pregnant belly. The rest
was up to me.

Playing 20 Characters in The Dybbuk.

But in Around
the World in 80 Days I get the whole enchilada. Costumer extraordinaire B.
Modern and her team assembled a whole closet full of period garb, rigged it all
with snaps and magnets and Velcro patches, attached beards and mutton chops and
mustaches to hats and caps and helmets and for 2 hours each night I dive in and
out of it all while trying to pop onstage with the right lines in the right
accent spoken by the correct character.

Breathing

This is just
the kind of demanding fun I like. Most actors give themselves a little moment
to settle in to who they are portraying before making an entrance. I don't get
that moment. A fully fledged character has to be put on in seconds, then erased
and replaced by the next one while desperately trying to put my hand in the
right sleeve or apply the next mustache. And then bang, I'm back on. Sometimes
you come on so flushed with the fact that you made the quick change in time to
make your entrance that it takes a moment to remember who you are. You are out
of breath. But the character isn't. He (or she) is just coming on to
play the scene. So one of the delicious challenges of multi character work is
respiratory. How to keep breathing onstage while a breathless scramble awaits
you offstage at every exit. How to give each character at least a fighting
chance to play, have fun and be his (or her)self.

Ralph Gautier of the Reform Club starts in on a monoclelog.

Tethers.

Finding these
characters and distinguishing them from each other calls upon some particularly
keen observation. I generally start with the chin, one of my favorite body
parts. Where a person wears their chin can color not only their posture and
attitude but their entire outlook on life. And when you're playing multi
characters distinguishing chin placement goes a long way. The arrogance of the
upturned chin works nicely in contrast with the tucked chin of a shy person.
Angle that same chin and suddenly we don't trust this guy.

But that's
just the beginning. Actors talk of a character's center. (My Colonel Procter in
Around the World in 80 Days is decidedly belly centered for example) but
few actors speak of a character's tether, that part of them that leads, that
moves them through space, ambulates them from one place to another.

Colonel Proctor. (Photo by Kevin Berne)

Gravity.

Each character
(person) has a different relationship with gravity. This may manifest itself in
how the spine is worn. Which may in turn color the baseline emotional state of
the character. Truly, the body has a sense memory.

Try saying
"It's a beautiful day" while wearing the body of someone beset with
heavy gravity, bent spine and tucked chin and you will feel what I mean.

Kabuto.

Sculpting.

Other
questions I try to answer for each character include:

Is he large or
small, fast or slow?

Where does he
keep his hands?

What is his
"home"? (The posture he is most comfortable in.)

What personal
quirk, tick, twitch or habitual mannerism does he rely on?

What is his
relationship in space to the other characters? (Is he a space invader or a
space evader?)

Does he flow or
is there something more jagged there?

What is at war
within him and what side is winning?

Acting is the
study of everything. And coming up with 20 separate and distinct characters for
Around the World in 80 Days has tested my resources. Sometimes you borrow
from our shared culture.

Captain Bunsby. (Photo by Kevin Berne)

Captain
Bunsby.

My Captain
Bunsby of the Tankadere, who takes Phileas Fogg from Hong Kong through
the storms to Yokohama sounds a bit like Quint from Jaws and a bit like
Sterling Hayden. (Who was originally slated to play Quint in Jaws by the
way.)

He has a mouth
full of gravel, an erect chin, a bent spine and lives in his own cloud of
increased gravity. His center is his grizzled beard and for a tether he sports
a wooden leg. A fear of the sea and a thirst for adventure are at war within
him. His hands are fists and they're most at home in his pea coat pockets. He
has a habit of stroking his beard that he's not aware of.

He's on stage
for about 5 minutes and then limps off, his wooden leg leading the way, never
to be seen again. But 2 seconds later I'm back on again, wearing a maid's dress
and bonnet and a whole new set of decisions sculpting me.

Bobby.

Emperor Norton.

Suez Consul.

Beautiful
Contradictions.

Sure there are
stereotypes here. Easy ways to latch on to a character and pigeon hole him into
an easily recreate-able cypher. And that's where an actor's malleability and
keen sense of observation comes in. To look for not only the broad strokes of
what makes a character recognizable but the deeper exploration of the qualities
(and contradictions) that make him human.

A line from Song
of Myself from Whitman's Leaves of Grass reminds us that we are
never just one thing, and all the quirks, imperfections, and contradictions are
par for the course. And what differentiate us. All 20 of us in Around the
World in 80 Days.

Sunday, May 07, 2017

You find
yourself in a random street corner somewhere near the border of North Beach and
Chinatown in San Francisco. The smells of simmering garlic risotto and sizzling
Szechwan mingle in the evening air. You've been told to keep your eye out for
a fellow in a faded overcoat and a canary colored fedora. You see him slouched
insouciantly against a lamp post. He whispers a password to you past his down
turned brim and upturned collar, gestures with a granite jaw towards either a
Chinese laundry or a dusty clock shop. A goon at the door puts a hand the size
of a porterhouse steak against your chest.

"Password."
he grumbles.

"Skidoo."
you reply.

With a grunt
he lets you pass and you make your way down the rabbit hole.

You're in one
of two places: either Sam Lee's Laundry Emporium or Joe's Clock Shop. Let's say
you're in Joe's. The place is littered with clocks in various states of
disrepair on every available surface. A desk bristles with springs and cogs and
clock faces from every drawer. There's no Joe. Instead a dame in a sequined
dress that fits her curves in all the right places reclines on a bentwood
chair. Her gimlet eyes smolder at you.

"Are you
here to get a clock fixed?" she murmurs, lips painted the color of a day
old bloodstain.

"Not
really." you manage to stammer.

"Then
you've come to the right place." She purrs and gestures you with lacquered
nails towards a grandfather clock that probably last worked sometime around
1902. You open the door that should contain the innards of the clock. That's when
you hear it. Music. Ragtime. A honky tonk waltz. You step into the clock and
out the other side...

And you are in
an illicit gambling den filled with flappers and dandies, swells and slatterns,
bootleggers and roustabouts all decked out in the full regalia of 1923. You
make your way past a Bellows boxing painting that hangs above a roulette table, past craps and
blackjack players hunched over the green felt of the gambling tables, their
chips clicking together in their sweaty palms and past an outstretched gloved
hand holding a long cigarette holder belonging to a women resplendent in spit
curls. Everyone is drinking.

A bookshelf
glides to one side on hidden wheels and you find yourself in a bar where a
mustachioed piano player named Oscar Frost plinks out some forgotten moonshine
sonata on a creaky upright. A bouncer with a face like a clenched fist and
tougher than the calluses on a barflies' elbow gives you a wink and sends you
through a secret passage marked only by a Dégas forgery. You make your way down
a long hallway. Still more music beckons you past a velvet curtain the color of
a bottomless lake.

You emerge into The Palace Theatre Cabaret, swollen with
swells swilling in the sepia glow of their table lamps or spilling over the
mezzanine above the bouquets of drunken boozers in the booths. And onstage,
caught in the glare of the footlights is a bevy of beauties in matching
sequined hot pants kicking their long legs in perfect unison to the din of Mr.
Arnie Topman and his Infamous Five.

In the center of the chorus girls a man in
a top hat and tails sings. He's the master of ceremonies, an ever ready joker
with a bucket full of clever asides in his brain pan, sporting a jet black wig
and a powdered face. His name is Eddie. The song ends and he raises a flask in
your direction, his lips inches from a 1923 vintage microphone and says in a
voice redolent of that era "So glad you could make it. Welcome to The
Speakeasy!"

Three swells swilling.

Under
Construction.

It started
back in 2016 and even before that at another venue in 2014 and is the
brainchild of Mr. Nick Olivero of Boxcar Theatre and his peripatetic business
partner David Gluck. I was brought on to create the role of Eddie the Unlucky, the
irrepressible gadfly emcee of the cabaret (loosely based
on Eddie Cantor and a host of other comic luminaries of the Prohibition era) in their immersive theatrerecreation of a 1923 speakeasy. I
had just emcee'd the Theatre Bay Area Theatre Awards at the Geary Theatre for
Nick and he asked if I was interested in creating Eddie for this 3 million dollar
project he was embarking on in San Francisco. The venue was still fully under
construction. It was a dusty, echo-y inhospitable environment to do theatre in.
Now, almost a year later it is one of the hottest tickets in the city. And
"Eddie" is at the center of it.

Becoming
Eddie.

First was
finding the material. Nick had done the heavy lifting of creating a cabaret
order of where the specialty acts, the chorus girls, the comedy vignettes, the
dream ballets would go. Eddie would be the one to tie them all together and
keep the ball rolling. The only rule: nothing written after 1923. Authentic
vaudeville humor. That plus what turned out to be seven songs, mostly from the
Eddie Cantor songbook; If You Knew Susie, The Dumber They Come, She Don't Like
It Not Much, etc. along with classics Lonesome Pine and even Those Were The
Days are sprinkled throughout the evening with patter and plain ol' stand up of
the time which needed to be part history lesson and part crowd control and all
funny all the time. That's not true. When things go awry Eddie waxes
philosophical and even holds forth with a Shakespeare soliloquy.

The Flannerelles.

Body of Work,
Work of Body.

Luckily, Eddie
Cantor was an extraordinary source of wit and ribald humor for generations and
we were able to cobble together a kind of greatest hits and misses into Eddie's monologues from his vast body of work. And after a couple of months I started
thinking like Eddie. Seeing the world through his cockeyed eyes.

But then came
the physicality. There's plenty of footage available of Eddie in the 30's and
40's. (He was one of those rare ones that went from vaudeville to radio to
television without losing any of his well deserved popularity.) But there is
precious little of the work he was doing pre 1923. Just a few grainy kinescopes
and some scratchy audio.

My first clue
into him was his eyes. Throughout his career he affected a goggle eyed look,
eyebrows in a perpetual state of astonishment. Next came his hands, splayed and
fan like, as if the palms were capturing the limelight and the fingers were
directing it directly to his garrulous face. His hips were square, retaining
some of that early 20th century Puritan stiffness above feet that were like
mirrors of his inner state: lively, jivey and almost irrepressibly delighted at
everything he saw, heard or suspected might be on the horizon.

Coy/DecoyThe
interesting challenge was that he was small in stature. And that was part of
his charm. And I wanted that. I wanted to cram his Napoleon complex into my 6'
frame. I went to my favorite body part: the chin. By tucking it, while still
letting my eyebrows have that Cantoresque buoyancy, I found I could feel like
the world was a little bit bigger than me. Eddie is almost coy. But because
he's got a trick or two up his sleeve, it's actually decoy. That along with a
slightly oversized costume seems to do the trick.

Giggle Juice
and Tonsil Varnish

Since
developing the role, they've had 2 others playing Eddie in The Speakeasy
(including the aforementioned impresario Nick Olivero) but I like to think that
Eddie Cantor himself, up in front of those footlights in the sky, is looking
down with those big eyes of his and smiling, knowing we're all doing our best
to give the swell swells of 2017 a little glimpse into a time when girls had
gams, goons packed heat and giggle juice could get you daffy at The Speakeasy.

Friday, February 05, 2016

I just
returned from a five month gig in Seattle at Teatro Zinzanni. I was playing the
mad movie director Cecil B. DeGrille. The show was called Hollywood Nights
and in it Teatro ZinZanni doubled as "Chez Francine" a fabulous
French restaurant presided over by none other than the divine Miss FrancineReed, blues legend and longtime partner in song with Lyle Lovett. Our concept
was that on this night of all nights the biggest Hollywood director, Cecil B.
DeGrille is coming for dinner. The restaurant staff (all played by an
international cast of sensationally talented performers, each with their own
amazing act) are thrown into a tizzy. I come in and immediately decide that
Chez Francine is the perfect location for my next cinematic masterpiece. That's
the set up. Besides a lot of comedy and lots of intros and outros throughout
the evening I'm responsible for the audience involvement part of the show.

And that means
victims. Lots of them.

97 shows.

6 victims per
show.

That's 576
complete strangers I invite to join me in the spotlight.

576 random
elements that I must select as fodder for funny.

576
unpredictable, usually raucous, sometimes delightful, often inebriated
involunteers I must cast in the "movie" sections that presage each
course of ZinZanni's 5 star meal.

But what to do
with these sometimes unwilling, sometimes overly garrulous, sometimes shy,
sometimes belligerentpatrons who have
paid more than a hundred dollars to escape the world or their wives or
themselves and enter the 105 year old Spiegeltent that is Teatro ZinZanni?

I arrive for
rehearsal a week before the rest of the cast and they put me and fellow former
Cirque du Soleil clown Joe DePaul in a room with a stage manager to take notes
and away we go. For six days we jam. We crack each other up. We brainstorm.
(Okay, sometimes it's just a drizzle but you get the idea.) We have to come up
with three bits that involve audience members that will be interspersed
throughout the three hours of what ZinZanni calls Love, Chaos and Dinner. Of
course there will also be juggling, trapeze, contortion, something called the
Chinese pole, even an opera aria. But at the center of it all are the three
audience involvement sections. That's me. Me and whoever I pick.

We're lucky.
The evening's concept is built around Cecil's megalomaniac film director so we
have the pantheon of movie clichés to work with. And there is a formula. These
are, when all is said and done, games. Party games supported by props and
lights and fabulous costumes, yes, but games. And one rule: the victim must
win. I can make fun of them, I can embarrass them but in the end they win. They
get an ovation. Their loved ones love them more. They survive, the unscathed stars
of the evening. In the lobby after the show I see them, all smiles, getting
high fives and adulation from other patrons who weren't lucky enough to be
selected. It feels good.

Megaphoney

Choosing
victims is an art. For my first bit of the evening we create a piece in which I
cast an extra to play a part in a kind of Downtown Abbey/Masterpiece Theatre
scenario in which he must first become a butler and then say a line and deliver
the Queen her royal tea. The queen dies (It's Helen Mirren's stand-in's dummy)
and my victim must revive her. Hilarity ensues. The victim's victory comes at
the end as we actually film him, at this point holding the ankles of a spreadeagled Queen aloft making "a sound that is filled with joy, anger,
confusion, regret, triumph and sorrow".

At the end of
he evening we will actually show a trailer of the Cecil B. DeGrille movie with
our real victims from that evening spliced in.

Basically the
formula with victim work is a lot like what I've discussed in these pages
before: getting a clown in trouble. Every involunteer gets a couple fairly easy
tasks and then an impossible one. And "real people" are a strange lot
I found. You never know what they're going to do. And that's what makes it so
damn fun.

But how to
pick them?

Usually you
forage. During what's called "Animation" you move among the tables.
You touch shoulders. You make funny. You check for wedding rings or canes. It's
psychology at 100 miles an hour. You go with your gut. For my second bit of the
evening I need a couple who don't know it yet but by the end will be kissing in
slow motion in a love scene at a Moscow train station.

I want fun- but not
crazy. I want slightly reticent- but not painfully shy. (Nothing kills laughs
like seeing someone in agony under a follow spot.)

You use your radar. This bit
worked best when it was an older couple who were perhaps celebrating an
anniversary (my record was 47th) and still have that little spark in their
smile. The victory moment in this bit was of course the kiss and when it worked
right 300 people let out a chorus of awwww's. This lead directly into the
audience dance section of the show and when the feeling was there it was true
magic.

Going for the juggler.

Of course that
bit was later in the evening, after I'd had a chance to smooze and covertly vet
them. But the first victim was selected from afar as I awaited my first
entrance in The Producer's Booth, tucked behind a window that gave me a good
view of the crowd. Body language, attitude, pecking order, engagement were my
only barometers on whether someone was going to be a joy or a jerk. Actually by
the end of the run it didn't matter. Even the jerks were a joy.

-->Of course
there are stand outs among them. I'll never forget a man's wife who, when I
asked her husband if there was anyone in the world he had a special chemistry
with, yelled out from the audience "His mother!"It brought the house down.

I remember too
the guy who I cast as one of my samurai- I had a bit with three victims playing
villagers in a Kurosawa style epic that culminated in cutting a cabbage in half
in mid air with my katana-who came to
the show twice and both times I cast him again (not recognizing
him) in the same role.

Cabbage cole slaughtered.

So thank you
victims, each and every one. As soon as I pulled you out of the safety of your
seat and onto my tightrope in the center of the room the energy in the room
quadrupled. Every time I leave a space for you to do something or ask you a
question the audience knows we are all moving into unknown territory. We all
await my response to your response together. And after twenty or so shows I'm
pretty much ready for whatever you're going to say. If I've picked the right
victim you'll become my unwitting straightman, setting them up so I can knock
'em down.

So that's a
wrap on Hollywood Nights at Teatro ZinZanni. Thank you, involunteers.
Take a bow.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

It feels like a completely arbitrary chronological
indicator of unrealized potential. Yes, there is physical evidence that 365
days is a worthy placeholder in our collective book of days with the seasons
and their ancient and mostly forgotten- unless you're a farmer or a haiku poet-inexorable march through time. But
in a world where climate conditions have gone wonky and unpredictable and the
only rituals that still make a blip on my personal radar are year's end top ten lists and the arrival of Screen Actors Guild screener DVDs in the mailbox.

So I don't get it.

The screaming, the goofy 2o17 goggles, the seeming
requirement to gulp gallons of bad champagne like a man gasping for air at an oasis
of bubbles. The standing in public squares with thousands of others waiting for
balls to drop in the freezing cold while their own retreat up into their
bodies.

I'm not one for crowds anyway but multiply that by
thousands of crazed imbeciles celebrating another tick on the mangy back of a
dog of a lifetime by shooting live ammo into the air (I live in Oakland) like
manic children playing cowboy while quaffing adult beverages by the bucketful.

Yes, New Years celebrations are a ritual and I'm all about
ritual but all that rampant enthusiasm just doesn't jibe with the solemn fact
that the previous year, however celebration worthy it may have been, is still
packed with 365 days worth of dire events, dreadful occurrences and let's face
it; Death.

And the next year will be too. Yeah, one night of unbridled
optimism doesn't hurt anyone and it's good to blow off steam at least
once a year but

you just won't find me pressed up against a metal cordon
with two thousand strangers in the middle of the night to yell at a clock.

That said, there's something to it. This out with the old,
in with the new positivism has ancient roots and I wanted in. My Druid
forebears probably partied pretty hard on those prehistoric evenings when the
heavenly stars and their towering stones aligned. The turning of the great
wheel is measurable perhaps and I didn't want to deprive myself of the mystery
of renewal and rebirth.

Sensei Diamantstein

My Sensei at Nishi Kaigan Iaido Dojo, Andrej Diamantstein,
Kyoshi, has a New Year's tradition. At 11:30 on December 31st we have a
practice. We swing into the new year with the swinging of steel blades. After
practice we have a potluck and lots of toasts and hilarity. But at the moment
the clock strikes twelve the only sound you hear is the squeak of bare feet and
tabi on polished wood and the unmistakable swish of three foot razor blades
cutting the air.

Hannya Mask. Actually a wronged woman

Everyone has demons.

We face them all year. The demons of procrastination,
addiction and apprehension prey on us all at one time or another.

And anyone who says they don't is probably under the
influence of yet another manifestation: the Demon of Denial.

That's why, on the final hour of one year and the first
hour of the next we only do three Waza.

One of the Waza we only do at this time of year. It's
special. The last time I saw it was seven years ago. It is called Akuma Barai
which basically means "Cutting down thedemons". I can only describe it as a piece of physical poetry. The
scenario, or bunkai of a this Waza involves no less than five opponents and
when performed well looks like a flower opening in one of those time lapse
shots you see on the nature channel. Only this flower is deadly. And when it's
done, the imaginary opponents, in this case demons, should crumple softly like
fallen leaves around the iaidoka as he returns the blade quietly to its resting
place scabbard or saya in Japanese.

The general feeling is one of profound resolve as the
opponents attack from all sides. You can't help but feel after performing it a
frisson of triumph and a delicate unveiling of the possibility of a world where
the demons lay vanquished and the future stretches out before you, untarnished
by the past. It is the perfect Waza for a new beginning. And a perfect way to
greet a new day. Or a new year. Even if it is just an arbitrary tick of a
clock.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

I performed 453 shows in four cities there. Our 3000 seat big
top was usually full.

I joined and trained in Iaido in four separate dojos.

I was there for the earthquake.

And the cherry blossoms. (twice.)

I got lost. (a lot.)

It was Myō.

A hundred years ago people wrote diaries. Your diary was your
Facebook, your private audience, yourself. I suppose blogs and such serve that
function now. This is how we label and describe our experience. I was looking
for a way to describe the experience of spending a year and a half in Japan and
I stumbled across the perfect word:

So the Japanese invented a word that describes the indescribable.
But this word is like a coin.

Another meaning lurks like a doppelganger on the
flip side of this coin.

And that meaning is simply this:
Strange.

Me and my Doppleganger

Indescribably beautiful on the one hand and just plain strange
on the other.

Uttering the Unutterable

Sad Cookie Box.

I won't do my experience the disservice of description.

I won't try to label the appreciation I have for the placement
of the delicately balanced foot paths I found on mountain trails.

I won't endeavor to put into words the tenderness I felt for a
trio of monks as they quietly swept spent ginkgo leaves into a pile at some
Kyoto temple.

I won't sully with syllables the rush of the marvelous that I
felt seeing how a single well placed chopstick can take a cascade of hair
spilling across a porcelain shoulder and turn it into an exquisite black
whirlpool that rests atop a head like a finely woven nest.

Suffice it to say it is indescribably beautiful.

Yet with that
there is a strangeness.

Suffice it to say it is Myō.

Shades of Shinjuku

Bloom Shelter

Is it not strange that on the last train on a Friday night on
the Yamanote line a man can drunkenly stagger into a crowded train, vomit, step
back onto the platform before the doors can close forcing the crush of humanity
to be forced to stand on the fresh spew in that impossibly confined space for
as many stops as it takes to get them to their
destination and nobody says anything.

Busiest Intersection on Earth.

Is it not strange that during the cold season sometimes 30% of
our audience were wearing surgical masks.

(Whether they wear them to protect themselves from others or to
protect others from themselves I was never able to ascertain.)

Beware of Kappa.

A flower amongst the ruins.

Is it not strange to look around the busiest train station in
the world and see no litter, no graffiti and thousands upon thousands of people
negotiating their way around one another and nobody bumps.

And the reason nobody bumps is that Japanese culture comes
replete with a fundamental sense of Ma.

Kids keeping Ma.

MA間

Meoto Iwa.

Ma is something beyond a word.

It is a concept.

A thread woven
through the fabric of existence.

And another word that straddles two meanings.

Ma is distance but it is also interval.

It is therefore time as well as space.

Ma is the emptiness between things.

It is the stillness that lives at the end and the beginning of
all movement.

In music Ma is the space between the notes.

In art it is the areas in which there is no art so that the art
may more readily be seen.

When Robert Rauchenberg erased a de Kooning he was playing with Ma.

In martial arts it is space between the opponents but also the
time necessary to attack or defend.

Because Ma is both time and space concurrently it can be charged
with possibility.

Ma is more than negative space.

Ma is alive.

Shiokawa Sensei and the Hakata Iai Study Group.

In Iaido you can see Ma at work quite clearly.

You can see it in the transitions, where the residue of what
came before gets a chance to ebb and the fuse of what is to come gets lit.

Maeda Sensei and godan Greg Robinson, Nagoya.

Iaidoka try to distinguish this space with a charged/not charged
quality.

This all inclusive awareness that does not pick out any one
thing in particular but rather endeavors to see all calmly is called Zanshin.

Keeping zanshin while executing a waza or form in iaido is one of those scratch
your head rub your belly conundrums that never gets old because it never gets
easy.

It is an attempt to follow sword/saint Miyamoto Musashi's suggestion in
his Book of Five Rings to have your outward aspect be the same in battle as it
is during everyday life and the same in everyday life as it is in battle.

Practicing Zenteki Gyakuto at Shiokawa Dojo.

Zanshin is elusive.

If you don't have it you're dead.

If you try too hard to get it you're dead.

But the combination of good zanshin and an innate sense of
proper Ma can be deadly.

Working too hard on my Zanshin.

In any duel (on or off the "battlefield") it is the
one who controls the Ma who is invariably the victor.

Ma is also a deeply personal thing.

How you manage Ma is as distinct to you as a fingerprint, as
revealing as an x-ray and perhaps the only place in the highly codified
practice of iaido where personal style can be subtly revealed.

Ma can be very real.

And Ma can disappear.

When a memory of stepping into a warm spring fed Onsen is as
vivid as if it is happening right now that is the Ma of time collapsing.

And the very real six thousand miles between Tokyo and San
Francisco is the Ma of distance rearing its ugly head.

About Me

Ron Campbell was the lead clown in Cirque du Soleil's Kooza and is currently playing Cecil B.DeGrille at Teatro Zinzanni. He was Alfie in One Man, Two Guvnors at Berkeley Rep and Sherlock Holmes in Hound of the Baskervilles. Eponymous roles include Don Quixote, Richard III, Tartuffe, The Imaginary Invalid and The Inspector General. He was a street performer in Europe, a founding member of the Actor's Gang and an Associate Artist at The California Shakespeare Theatre and The Los Angeles Theatre Center. He stars in The Far Near Shore, a film directed by Jeff Warrin. His solo shows include R. Buckminster Fuller, The Dybbuk, The Thousandth Night, A Tale of Two Cities, The Bone Man of Benares, Shylock and Beckett’s Eh Joe. He has performed at The Habima, The Mark Taper Forum, The American Conservatory Theatre, The Royal Albert Hall, The Old Globe and the Old Red Lion in London. The Fuji Dome in Tokyo. Awards: The London Fringe One Man Show of the Year, The Los Angeles and Bay Area Critic’s Circle Awards for Lead and Solo Performance, Theatre Bay Area Best Actor Award and The Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement.